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Sunday, October 19, 2008

The Mystery of Colors

Take, for example, one of my all-time favorite colors, Wedgwood Blue, (though this yarns is called Delft by my distributor). It's such a personable, restful, regal color, and yet in the context of this warp, it looks positively dirty and gray. (I admit, it's a mighty photogenic color and none of my pics show the blandness.)

And then the marine/teal thing, called Iris; it's so loud it's borderline obnoxious, and yet it produces amazing metallic look, both in this warp and in combination with my favorite gold. Sadly Iris has been discontinued.

And then there's the way colors change appearances. My pics don't do justice to reflect the startling differences in Scarf 1 from the right and the left; later when the sun was streaming in from the window behind me, the view from the right was almost white.

7 comments:

This is an interesting subject - it's such a sobjective thing. I *like* the subtleties going with the colours in these scarves, and they make them identifiably yours. The muting is what makes it all work.

I love, worship and adore Darwall. But you have a beautiful non-Darwall warp and it is just as achingly beautiful as any Darwall warp. It's problem is not that it is not achingly beautiful; the problem is that it is not Darwall and so you do not recognize its beauty. I have a real suspicion that this warp you designed IS you but you won't own it and so you are trying to turn it into a Darwall kind of weaving and so destroy it instead of working on how to enhance its great beauty. Darwall has his own voice. You need to find your own.

I know what you mean, Peg. On the other hand, in the three color/painting courses, and my figure drawing course, I've been learning about the artist's ability to (try to) draw the viewers' attention to certain parts/aspects of a work. I had thought previously that that was strictly a compositional thing, but I learned that you can also do this with color composition.

For example, if I had an orange-red or a slightly burned red, I could potentially include that in the raincoat blues and greens to make this a tad zingier; just a bit "special occasion" than an everyday scarf. And I suspect that kind of manipulation/consideration on the artists' part could be the difference between weaving a pretty piece and a really satisfying deep-breath-afterwards kind of a scarf. I'm also picking this up by reading and studying Connie Rose's work, and how individual each one is.

Which also makes me think of why I weave scarves; do I want to make arty pieces to satisfy me, and hope to wow viewers, or weave convenient/versatile "color" pieces that fit a range of outfits and can potentially be woven on a machine. And for now, I'd like to aim for the former, even though the latter might sell more easily.

There is absolutely no doubt the warp reflects where I was before the painting courses. I'm pretty sure this is not where I am today, Peg. One can only keep trying.

Ahh, interesting, so you made the warp quite a bit earlier. Also, glad you're still talking to me....I was a bit worried! I do understand the concept of zing. I actually first heard it from Darwall himself. And it's very hard to do. Not only is zing something unexpected (and it doesn't have to be color; assymmetry, for example, is a very typical form of design zing), it is something at the same time that looks exactly right and adds to rather than detracts from the whole. That's the hard part! This is why a zinger is usually used about three times so that it doesn't just seem to be a mistake.I'm now beginning to think of a crackle painted warp that moves from blue-greens to yellow-greens. Crackle structure. I'll be struggling with much the same things you are struggling with.

Peg, I remembered after your comments this morning that I've been thinking about these raincoat blues and greens for a year now, and I've so much visual clippings for reference to add the zing, but I never thought of this entire process as a whole - just been thinking in a piecemeal fashion.

So I've been thinking about it all and I think it's going to be like... 3 posts in a series, and it's going to take some time because I need to collect photos.

But I'm looking forward to it, because it ties in directly with why I want the scholarship and get some one-on-one lessons from painters and such.

(And I still do intend to revisit the how-I-design thing, too, as I promised you.)